People Motel

This was my room at "People Motel". When entering someone's home here in South Korea, you are expected to remove your shoes. You do this at many restaurants as well. It's not a big deal (as long as your feet aren't too smelly), because the floors are heated and it actually feels quite nice on the feet. I spent most of my time in this room sleeping, reading "Confessions" by Augustine, and watching Korean TV. They have two channels dedicated to the computer game StarCraft.

Here you see the showoiletink room (I just made that word up; it's not Korean). This room is your shower, toilet, and sink. When you take a shower, water gets everywhere. I would have appreciated this in college, because when you are ready to clean the bathroom, you simply hose down the whole room with the shower head. Oh yeah, the light in the showoiletink room went out while I was there. I am proud to say that I was able to communicate this to the woman at the front desk by bringing the lightbulb to her and shaking it by my head (you know, you can hear that rattleing sound when it's gone bad). She promptly got me a new bulb and seemed amazed when I put it into the socket all by myself. This bathroom setup is common to most Korean homes.

I think I might have died of starvation if Jean (the Korean manager at Ewha, my school) and her husband hadn't taken me out to have pizza. I had no money and no idea where anything was. They also took me shopping and got me some bannanas and orange juice.

I was a bit sad when I had to leave my comfy little room.